The Persian having evacuated the imperial provinces, the vizier became more cruel and oppressive than ever: he extorted money from the poor by tortures, and confiscated the estates of the nobility, upon false or very frivolous pretences.

Whenever you strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, you know—you find a custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it’s their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’t pay the duty they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don’t deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all it is.

[…] not to lay into the Exchequer, or Common Treasury, such goods as are confiscate, but to store them up as holy and consecrate things, which except it bee practised, confiscations, and fines of the Common people would bee frequent, and so this State would decay by weakening the people.